Column
Alain Frachon
Columnist
While in Syria, Turkey is taking the place of Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, while the latter, along with Hamas and Hezbollah, is registering defeat after defeat at the hands of Israel, writes Le Monde’s columnist Alain Frachon.
Published today at 11:14 am (Paris) 3 min read Lire en français
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The Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, Iran’s nuclear program, a new Syria: The Middle East is being reconfigured. A new strategic profile is emerging, the map of power is changing, with winners and losers, many unknowns and a touch of continuity.
The old powers are in a sorry state. Egypt (111 million inhabitants), lives on a permanent drip-feed from the International Monetary Fund; Iraq (44 million) is recovering from nearly half a century of war; ravaged by 14 years of internal conflict, Syria (22 million) has yet to be rebuilt. More than ever, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus, the birthplaces of several great dynasties, are giving way to the owners of hydrocarbons. Behind Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, in wealth and influence, dominates the old Arab world.
Three non-Arab countries dominate the region’s strategic agenda: Iran (85 million residents), Israel (9 million) and Turkey (85 million). The Middle East is shaped not only by their relations with each other but also by their respective histories. Turkey, currently, comes out of the trio at the top.
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It’s a country with multiple diplomatic facets. A member of NATO but on good terms with Russia and China; predominantly Sunni (the majority branch of Islam), it has relations with the Palestinian group Hamas but also, alternately hot and cold, with Israel. A nostalgia for the seven centuries of regional domination, that of the Ottoman period, clings to the country. In a moment of uncontrolled hubris, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently once said: “Every incident that has occurred in our region, especially in Syria, reminds us of this fact: Turkey is bigger than Turkey […] it cannot limit its horizons to its current surface area” and cannot “escape or hide from its destiny.” – quoted by journalist and professor James M. Dorsey on his website “The Turbulent World.“
At war with its Kurdish autonomists, Turkey wants to cut them off from the rear base that their Syrian Kurdish cousins could offer them on the other side of the border. In the mood for conquests, it is occupying northwestern Syria and wants to seize the northeast. Without Ankara’s at least tacit green light, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Syrian Islamist group, would not have ousted Bashar al-Assad’s clan from power in Damascus.
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